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- [00:10]
A
Office to residential redevelopment is an increasing field of urban planning as more and more workers leave their cubicles behind for the comforts of home. So how can cities accelerate these developments to ensure that residents have access to housing and buildings are being utilized to their full potential? You're listening to Tall Stories, a Monocle production brought to you by the team behind the Urbanist. I'm Andrew Tuck. In this episode, Naomi Zhu Elegant takes us to New York to investigate the largest office to residential conversion in American history.
- [00:57]
B
Earlier this year, the first tenants moved into Soma Residences in New York's financial district. The luxury building features 1300 apartments across 32 floors and 100,000 square feet of amenities, including two swimming pools and a bowling alley. It's also the largest office to residential conversion in American history. To learn how the project came about, I talked to Brian Steinwerzel, the co CEO of GFP Real Estate, which purchased the original building on 25 Water street and developed Somalia.
- [01:27]
C
There's a clear need for residential housing in New York City. I think the latest estimates are that we have a shortage of approximately 500,000 units and there's very little new supply coming online. So there's a significant economic motivation to create the housing as well as the societal one. And the city and state also recognized this and created the 467M program which incentivizes office owners to convert their buildings to residential. And so in combination with all those factors, there's a lot of groups like ours that are looking to do these kinds of projects. Demand is extremely robust. I believe that people are extremely excited about our project and the product that we've delivered. The most common expression that I get after I tour either investors or lenders or friends through the building is how do I sign up to live here? Because it's so incredible. You know, it's really a almost like a resort within New York City that has almost anything you'd want to do. And the actual residential product, the kitchens, the bathrooms, the units themselves are really beautiful with very tall ceilings and great views and, you know, strong access to transportation. So yes, the demand has been robust and we're leasing better than we expected.
- [02:49]
B
How do you think SOMA is going to affect the neighborhood around it?
- [02:53]
C
Well, I think the neighborhood has been evolving over the last 30 years to be a mixed use neighborhood. And there are already over 30,000 people that live in this neighborhood. And I think that SOMA is going to help to continue that transition. And most of the best neighborhoods in New York City are mixed use neighborhoods. If you think About Union Square or soho or Chelsea or tribeca. These are very successful residential neighborhoods and very successful commercial neighborhoods. And it just shows that New Yorkers want to live and work in a neighborhood together. So I think it's just going to continue that process and it will significantly improve the experience of living and working in the area.
- [03:40]
B
I also talked to John Cetra and Nancy J. Ruddy, the founding principles of Cetra Ruddy, the architecture firm that transformed SOMA from a windowless brick office building to a light filled luxury residence.
- [03:52]
D
The interesting thing about this building, the existing building before we converted it, is that it didn't fit into the neighborhood. You know, it was a hulking building with very, very few windows. It was designed to house people working at computers, sort of a back office operation. So it didn't have many windows, which was a real surprise. Every other building that went up on the east side, let's say of Water street, were modern buildings that used glass and steel aluminum. Very, very modern building. So this one building actually stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all these other buildings that came after 1969, which kind of represented a very, very different and more international style of architecture. Even though they tried to make a gesture to the historic part of the city by using a brick color that was more earth tone, it didn't work. It really didn't work. It just looked like a big bulky building with no windows and it was kind of depressing actually. So now it's, I think, totally transformed and it feels much better in its context.
- [04:59]
E
One thing I would like to add about one of the benefits of adaptive reuse and conversion is that of all building typologies, reusing existing infrastructure and existing buildings is the most sustainable thing that we can do for the city and globally. So people always think of sustainability as thinking of mechanical systems and material. But just by saving a building, you are getting closer to carbon neutrality and to sustainability, which I think is a major asset. Do you foresee these kinds of conversions.
- [05:38]
B
Becoming more common as you're saying, the.
- [05:41]
E
Residential and the commercial all mixed up a bit more?
- [05:43]
D
Yeah, absolutely. We're being called for projects in other cities. In Texas, you know, Washington, D.C. has a big market, Philadelphia as well. We're actually working on a conversion of 1960s office building in Charlotte that will be mixed use with hotel and residential. So definitely there's going to be more and more of it and it's just a matter of whether there's the right building typology. In New York, we have these large buildings which we can convert and within three, four years, we can create another 1300 apartments in one project. Not all cities have that kind of density or sizes of buildings, so they won't all be able to have the same impact, but I think they'll definitely try. I know that in Boston, Boston is setting up the zoning to allow for more conversions to occur there, but they don't have these big buildings. A lot of the buildings downtown are much smaller, so it's a different impact than New York. But in New York, we could create a lot of apartments with conversions like the ones that we did at Somalia.
- [06:56]
A
Tall Stories is a monocle production from the team behind the Urbanist. This episode was written by Naomi Zhu, elegant and produced and edited by David Stevens. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive new episodes every week. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening. City Lovers.